Shaun Prendergast credited as playing...
Bates
- Williams: Who goes there?
- King Henry V: [disguised, wearing a cloak] A friend.
- Williams: Under what captain serve ya?
- King Henry V: Under - Sir Thomas Erpingham.
- Williams: A good old commander and a most kind gentleman. I pray ya, what thinks he of our estate?
- King Henry V: Even as men wrecked upon a sand that look to be washed off with the next tide.
- Williams: He hath not told his thought to the king?
- King Henry V: No, nor it is not meet he should. I think the king is but a man, as I am. The violet smells to him as it doth to me. His ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man. Therefore, when he sees reason to fear, as we do, his fears, out of doubt, be of the same relish as ours are.
- Bates: He may show what outward courage he will, but I believe, as cold a night as 'tis that he could wish himself in Thames up to the neck. And so I would he were, and I by him. At all adventures, so we were quit here.
- King Henry V: I think he would not wish himself anywhere but where he is.
- Bates: Then I would he were here alone.
- King Henry V: Methinks I could not die anywhere so contented as in the king's company, his cause being just and his quarrel honorable.
- Williams: That's more than we know.
- Bates: Aye, and more than we should seek after. For we know enough if we know we are the king's subjects. If his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.
- Williams: But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make. And all those legs and arms and heads chopped off in the battle shall join together at the latter day and cry all, "We died at such a place." Some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I'm afeared there are few die well that die in a battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.
- King Henry V: So, if a son that is by his father sent about merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the imputation of his wickedness, by your rule, should be imposed upon the father that sent him? But this is not so. The king is not bound to answer the particular endings of his soldiers nor the father of his son, for they purpose not their deaths when they purpose their services. Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Every subject's duty is the king's, but every subject's soul's his own.